Rangers logo at midfield symbol of change
It seems like something so simple, a logo of the school’s mascot at midfield.
For Logan High School, however, it represents a new era.
Sure, the Rangers’ new turf field is what will actually be celebrated at 6:45 p.m. tonight with a dedication, but it’s that logo at midfield that’s symbolic.
If Logan still had its old field, there wouldn’t be a mascot logo there, based on the recent weather.
“The whole middle would be one big swamp, because the grass was basically weeds down the middle,” Logan coach Casey Knoble said. “As soon as something like this (weather) happens, it would just disenigrate the whole middle. It would just turn into a very hard dirt surface between the hashes.”
So that new logo isn’t just a symbol, it’s symbolic.
“For the school of our size, we had the worst field in the area,” Knoble said.
With the $1.33-million renovation, including a $200,000 grant from the Green Bay Packers, Logan now has new turf, a new scoreboard, new goal posts and shadowed numbers – not to mention a newly resurfaced track.
The Rangers have practiced on the field just twice – because the track wasn’t completely finished – so playing on the turf won’t feel quite at home yet.
And don’t expect some big, new “greatest show on turf” gameplan any time soon. Knoble isn’t changing anything, despite the field surface allowing his team to be quite a bit faster than the one that was plodding through the muck before.
“No, we’ll still run the same plays whether it’s swamp or not,” Knoble said.
The best thing about the new field might just be that the team can actually have a 100-yard long, 50-yard wide area to practice on.
With a fragile, grass and weed filled field of year’s past, the team didn’t dare practice on it, for fear of making the “worst field in the area” even worse. Instead, Logan was forced just below to the practice field, which was basically just a grassy area. One that wasn’t 50 yards wide, drastically limiting what the team could work on.
Now, however, Knoble said they plan to be up there as much as they can, as long as another team isn’t using the field.